Sarah POV:

Bullshit.

My heart hammered against my ribs. The sedative they had given me earlier was making my limbs heavy, but my mind was terrifyingly clear.

Before they dragged me in here, I had been in the recovery ward. The walls were thin. I had heard Marcus on the phone.

She needs to be neutralized, or the Council won't approve Rachel's son as the heir, he had said. Burn the house. If Sarah survives, I'll strip her wolf. A wolfless Luna is no Luna at all.

He didn't want to protect me. He wanted to make room for his mistress and his bastard child.

"Proceed," Marcus commanded. The air pressure in the room dropped, his aura sucking the oxygen out of the space.

The doctor sobbed, a choked sound, but her body moved against her will. The Alpha Command hijacked her muscles. She picked up the syringe. It was filled with a shimmering, metallic liquid.

Liquid silver.

In our world, silver is the ultimate poison. It burns through our accelerated healing, halts our shifting, and if injected directly into the bloodstream in high doses, it hunts down the wolf nature inside us and severs the link, effectively erasing it. It is a torture usually reserved for traitors and murderers.

"Marcus," I croaked. My throat was raw from the smoke. "Please."

He didn't look at me. He looked at the wall. "It will be over soon, Sarah. You won't feel the burden of your wolf nature anymore."

The needle pierced the vein in my arm.

I gasped.

It wasn't cold. It was fire. Molten lead surged up my arm, racing toward my heart.

I screamed.

The pain was not just physical. It was spiritual. I felt her-the essence of my wolf-panic. She clawed at the inside of my chest, howling in confusion and agony. She tried to heal the intrusion, but the silver was too potent. It was acid eating through silk.

Sarah! she cried out in my mind, her voice distorted by pain. Run!

I can't, I sobbed internally.

The fire spread to every nerve ending. My back arched off the table, straining against the leather straps. The sound of my own screaming filled the small room, bouncing off the concrete walls.

Marcus watched. He didn't flinch.

Then came the tear.

It felt like a rusty hook snagging the core of my soul and ripping it out through my throat.

A high-pitched whine echoed in my head, followed by a terrible, suffocating silence.

My wolf gave one last shudder, a phantom sensation of fur bristling, and then she was gone. The connection that had been a warm hum in the back of my mind since I was a child was severed.

I went limp. The world turned gray. My hearing, usually sharp enough to hear a heartbeat across the room, dulled instantly. The smell of rust faded into a generic metallic odor.

I was empty.

"It is done," the doctor whispered, collapsing to her knees.

Marcus walked over to the table. He looked down at me. I was sweating, trembling, tears streaming down my face into my ears.

He reached out and brushed a damp lock of hair from my forehead. His touch, which should have sent sparks of the Mate Bond through me-the electric thrill of a fated connection-felt like nothing. Just warm, dry skin.

The bond was broken physically, even if the moon still recognized it.

"Shh," he soothed, his voice dripping with fake tenderness. "You're safe now, Sarah. You can rest. No more burdens."

He leaned down and kissed my forehead. It was the kiss of a Judas.

I wanted to spit in his face. I wanted to tear his throat out. But I was just a powerless girl now, strapped to a table, surrounded by wolves.

If I fought, he would kill me. If I showed him that I knew the truth, I would never leave this room.

I forced my trembling hand to lift. I grabbed his lapel. I looked into his eyes with all the desperation of a dying animal.

"Thank you," I whispered, the lie tasting like bile in my mouth. "Thank you for saving me, Alpha."

Marcus smiled. It was a triumphant, arrogant smile. He thought he had won. He thought he had broken me.

He had no idea what he had just unleashed.

Sarah POV:

The silence was the loudest thing I had ever heard.

For twenty-three years, my mind had been a shared space. My wolf was my instinct, my strength, my constant companion. Now, there was just a hollow cavern where she used to be.

I lay in the master bedroom of the Alpha's mansion. Marcus was asleep beside me, his breathing deep and even. The arrogance of the man was astounding; he slept soundly next to the woman whose soul he had just mutilated.

It was 2:00 AM.

I slid out of bed. My body felt heavy and clumsy without the supernatural grace of the wolf. Every joint ached. The burn scars on my arm from the "accident" pulled tight against my skin.

I crept toward his study. The floorboards creaked, and I froze, my heart leaping into my throat.

Marcus didn't stir.

I reached the heavy oak door of his office. I didn't need a key; I knew where he hid the spare. But inside, I went straight for the wall safe behind the painting of the pack's founding Alpha.

The keypad glowed blue in the dark.

I didn't bother with anniversaries or sentimental dates. Marcus was pragmatic to a fault, but his ego was his blind spot. He wouldn't use our anniversary. He would use the date he secured his "legacy."

I typed in Oliver's birthday. The date the bastard child was born.

Beep. Click.

The heavy door swung open. I almost laughed. Predictable.

My hands shook as I pulled out a stack of documents. I didn't have much time. I sat on the floor, using the moonlight filtering through the window to read.

The first paper was a prenatal check-up report from three years ago. Patient Name: Rachel Miller.

The second was a DNA paternity test. Father: Marcus Blackwood. Probability: 99.99%.

I covered my mouth to stifle a sob. Three years. He had proposed to me two years ago. He had been sleeping with Rachel, a woman with no wolf blood, a simple human who hung around the pack borders, while he was courting me.

I swiped through the unlocked iPad stored in the safe. The cloud photos synced automatically.

There were hundreds of them. A little boy with Marcus's dark eyes and Rachel's sharp chin. Pictures of them at the zoo, at a private beach, in an apartment I didn't know existed.

Then I found the chat logs.

Rachel: When are you going to get rid of the bitch? Oliver needs his father publicly.

Marcus: Soon, my love. The fire is set for Tuesday. If she survives, the silver will handle the rest. She'll be a useless Omega. The Elders won't let a cripple be Luna.

Rachel: She better not be pretty anymore. I want her ruined.

Marcus: Anything for you.

I felt sick. I wanted to vomit right there on the expensive Persian rug.

I didn't just put the documents back. I took photos of everything with my burner phone. Every document, every damning text message. I also found the access keys to an untraceable offshore account and transferred a substantial sum—enough to disappear forever. He would assume it was part of a corporate hack; he would never trace it to me. Then, I accessed his email on the iPad. I drafted a scheduled email to the Council of Elders and Beta Thomas—Marcus's second-in-command, a man who valued honor above loyalty. I attached every file.